


The Third Brother

by Fire_BornOfIce



Series: Edda [3]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-07-15 16:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16067015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fire_BornOfIce/pseuds/Fire_BornOfIce
Summary: Not many people know that Thor and Loki had another brother...





	1. Chapter 1

Not many people know that Thor and Loki once had a brother.

He was born when they were each only a few centuries old, and his arrival was a shock for both his parents and the people of Asgard.

Frigga explained to her oldest sons that Thor was a difficult birth. He had come late, and was therefore rather large for a new-born.

“I could feel the power brimming within you, trying to get out,” she told her sons, when they were small and Thor was causing problems for Asgard by summoning storms when he dreamt. “We thought you would kill me, my strong child, or the both of us.”

Loki clung to his mother’s skirts, shaking his head in horror at the very thought of being without her, though his rational brain (even at his young age) told him that if she had died birthing Thor, he would not be here either.

“After you,” Frigga told Thor. “We did not think we’d be able to have another.”

“What about me?” asked Loki.

Frigga paused, her hand reaching out to stroke his jet hair. “Oh, you came to me quite by surprise. Silent as a shadow, in the middle of the night. But I sensed your power the moment I held you in my arms, little crow.”

The two boys glance at the empty crib in the middle of the room, and place gentle hands upon her swollen belly, feeling their brother kick softly inside of her.

When the midwife came to tell them that their brother was being born, and earlier than expected, Loki prayed to the Norns for hours that it would be easy, like he was, and not bring her to death like Thor almost did. And though Thor was silent, the sky trembled with the distant rumble of thunder, and Asgard’s farmers despaired once more for their harvests.

But all was well, and the third son of the King and Queen of Asgard was born hale and healthy. They let Odin in first, and eventually the two boys. They ran to their father’s side and saw him smile as they had never seen before, and a loving gaze in Frigga’s eyes, both of them looking at the wriggling, burbling bundle in her arms.

“His name is Baldur,” Frigga told them.

She would not let either Thor or Loki hold him, and Thor had a tantrum and went to bed in a huff, saying “You let me hold Loki.”

“But you were a few days old by then, perhaps even weeks,” Odin kindly explained to the confused second son.

 

When Baldur was a couple of months old, Frigga woke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with a scream on her lips. The sound woke Odin, who wrapped his arms around her and rocked her gently.

“What did you see?”

Frigga had already begun to pry her way out of his grip. She left the bed, a conjured light in her palm. “I must go to the Norns.”

“It is the middle of the night. What about the baby?”

Frigga looked at him with such seriousness in her eyes that he was instantly silenced. He knew that when his wife had a Norn-sent dream, he must not argue. But it was not wise to argue with the Norns about their foretellings either.

“Do as you must,” he said.

 

Frigga was gone for a long time. Thor trained. Baldur cried. Loki followed Odin everywhere, asking when she would be back.

“I’ve missed four study sessions. I’ll fall behind in my magic!”

The tutors Odin picked out to stop Loki’s complaints only bring more.

“They are amateurs! I already outmatch them, they can teach me nothing! I miss mother, where is she?”

Odin had no answer, because since her dream and going to consult the Norns, Frigga sent no communication.

Suddenly, Baldur stopped crying. He went an entire day without a single tear, even when the apprentice nurse forgot to support his head properly when she rocked him, and heated his milk a little too hot. He just laughed. The wetnurse and nursery maids panic. No baby has ever acted like this before. Thor would beat his little fists and kick his little legs and no one could come within a metre until he calmed. Loki would sniffle and fuss for hours and his seidr would turn the room cold unless everything was just so. But they knew how to deal with tantrums and fussing. Baldur was an enigma.

Only when Frigga returned was it explained.

“Nothing can harm him!”

“What?”

Odin exclaimed it when she delightedly hugged him before even removing her travelling cloak and boots. Thor yelled it in excitement, thinking of how great it would be to fight against an opponent without having to hold back. Loki muttered it in confusion, since such a thing was impossible. And the nursemaids and wetnurse practically wept as they implored of their queen “what could you possibly mean?”

“I asked the Norns what I could do to protect my child from the harms of the world, and they said I must merely ask each plant and creature not to do him harm, and thus no harm shall come to him.”

“Each and every plant and creature in all the nine realms?” Odin asked.

“Did you ever do such a thing for us?” asked Thor.

“Of course she didn’t,” snapped Loki. “Or you could not have been snapped by the lobster at dinner the other night.”

“You enchanted that lobster to return to life and pinch me!” Thor countered.

“I did no such thing,” Loki lied.

“Well you fell into the nettle patch and got stings on your arse,” Thor said, and that ended that conversation.

 

“Why do it, beloved?” asked Odin, that night, as Frigga rocked her youngest in her arms. He slept soundly, with the sweetest smile of contentment on his face. Nothing troubled him. Not even nightmares.

Frigga’s smile became a little sad. “If you had seen the things I had dreamt,” she said, “you would not question my actions. I cannot lose another.”

Odin knows better than to question her again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter comes to Asgard

If Odin and Frigga knew how easy it was for their children to slip out of their nurses’ sight, they’d hire better nurses.

Gurd had given Thor the very important task of pushing the barrow, meant to collect the winter plants to decorate the palace for the solstice feast. Right now, the barrow was a chariot, and Baldur its happy rider. Bored of waiting whilst Gurd attacked an ivy creeper with her sheers, Thor had roped his brothers into a quest of their own. “Roped” meaning that he deposited Baldur into the barrow and set off, expecting Loki to follow.

“Where going?” burbled the miniature charioteer. Baldur was just about old enough to toddle on his own, though he could go further if he held one of his brothers’ hands, but he was more than content to be pushed. The barrow was a much more comfortable seat from which to view the snow-covered trees, pines dripping with icicles.

“We’re going to find a snow dragon,” said Thor proudly. “And slay it. Hurry up, Loki.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Loki had stopped walking and was bent over, hands in the snow. The moment he heard his name, he quickly straightened up. “Coming!”

“Daggon!” giggled Baldur, who was still too young to know that there were no snow dragons in Asgard’s forests.

“We’ll skin it and make a cloak from its hide,” Thor announced.

Baldur was not fussed about the fine details, and shoved his thumb into his mouth, before removing it in confusion at the woolly taste of glove. For a few moments, there was only the sound of the winter wind rustling the pines, and the slow trudge-crunch of small feet and wheels cutting through snow.

Baldur turned around in the barrow to look back at where they had come. He pointed a chubby hand past Thor and delightedly shrieked. “Lo!”

Thor turned around with perfect timing. The snowball Loki had been aiming at the back of his head hit him square in the face.

Thor dropped the barrow and stooped to scoop up a snowball of his own, only to be pelted with two more Loki had been storing, hovering in the air and propelled by magic.

“No magic! Not fair!” Thor yelled. The etiquette of returning snowballs with snowballs slipped his mind. He charged at Loki and tackled him into the snow, whilst Baldur clapped his hands and shrieked with laughter.

“Boys!”

The older brothers froze. Gurd’s shadow fell over them, at just the right moment, for things might have gotten ugly had she not noticed the absence of the barrow and followed its tracks to them.

“I was wondering where the barrow had gone. Get up and clean yourselves off. Loki, put your gloves on.”

She grabbed the handles of the barrow and turned it around, making the older boys walk in front of her, heads bowed, dragging their feet through the snow, back to her pile of ivy. There was another plant in there too, one the children did not recognise, with a long stem, slim leaves and round, white berries.

“Don’t eat those, they’re poisonous,” Gurd warned, lifting Baldur out of the barrow, and directing Thor and Loki to load it up with plants. “Mistletoe. Its only recently started growing here. Someone must have brought a cutting with them from another realm and it got loose. Very pretty, but let it take root on another tree and it will suck the host dry of life. Better off in Asgard’s halls where it can’t grow, then burning it once the season’s over.”

 

Asgard’s halls did look quite lovely, strung with ivy and holly and mistletoe. When the shortest night came and the people feasted to welcome in the longer, warmer days of the new year, Baldur waddled around the room, playing with each green plant. Even the holly, whose sharp leaves pricked many a finger, did not bother him no matter how hard he clutched it in his hand.

However, at one point, Loki spotted Baldur quickly pull his hand away from the displays. He did not cry or call for Frigga, and was smiling brightly again when he returned to her side. But Loki had seen the brief look of discomfort that had crossed his face, and the cause. It was the mistletoe Baldur had touched.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, this fic is slowly growing beyond my original thoughts. It was only meant to be, like, two chapters, but I 've got to make Baldur a proper, rounded character.
> 
> Also, it is difficult to reconcile the fact that Thor absolutely used to be a jerkass before Thor 1 with the Thor we've all come to know and love. I just live with the knowledge that he'll grow out of it :)

Baldur was beautiful.

He was grown now. Barely a man, yet no longer a child. A youth in his prime, with a brightness in his eyes, strength in his limbs and grace in his movements. He wore his bronze hair wild and his face clean shaven (to differentiate himself from Fandral the Dashing, claimed Fandral and only Fandral, since otherwise their looks were identical). The people said it was as if all the best traits of his brothers had been taken and put into this one being.

Baldur the Beautiful.

“I would rather be Baldur the Brave,” he said.

Difficult, thought Loki, to be called ‘brave’ when nothing can harm you. There is no bravery in charging into battle against weapons that will do no damage. Courage comes when danger is inevitable and yet you face it anyway. But Baldur did fight, did charge into battle with sword and shield. He did not hide in the shadows and use magic and throwing knives against the enemy. Asgard called that fighting with cowardice. Loki called it fighting smart.

Baldur might not be called brave, but he would never be called a coward.

If Thor had any reason to dislike Baldur, he never showed it. As the oldest, Thor would always have he status of the heir. And, as the oldest, he was beginning to explore things that made life more enjoyable. Things he had always known made him happy, but was now allowed to enjoy in full. The thrill of battle, certainly, but for the most part, wine and women. And women were happy to have him.

But Baldur had his share of suitors too. Women wanted Thor for his status and his strength (and Thor, not particularly discerning, was all too happy to indulge them). Women (or their rich fathers) wanted Loki for the elevation marriage to a prince would give their families.

Women fell for Baldur. Men fell for him. Baldur – friendly, chivalrous, _beautiful_ Baldur – was adored.

But Baldur seemed hesitant to reciprocate. He chatted with those who flirted with him, but he rarely flirted back. It seemed he did not know how to. Often those who pursued Baldur were aggressive and sweet, kind Baldur simply could not match such intensity. And there were so many of them, Baldur, as much as he wanted to accept an offer, did not have the heart to accept one and therefore refuse the rest.

“It is a hard line to tread,” he lamented to his brothers and friends one day. They were taking a light lunch (a mere entire game hen and loaf of bread per person) after a morning of training. “I was prepositioned by a Lady of Vanaheim and a young Thane of one of the outer territories just last night. I cannot risk offending one by taking the other, what if my decision causes a war?”

Loki glanced at Thor, whom he knew full well had slept with a large number of Vanir ladies and young Thanes, and many others, without such issue, including the previous night. And he was the heir!

“It is courting, Baldur, you aren’t accepting a marriage.”

“He wants to be wed before he beds,” Volstagg laughed, and raised his tankard to the blushing Baldur. “Now here is a youth with nobility.”

“You could just take both to bed at once,” Thor suggested, and Baldur turned even redder.

When a quiet moment presented itself, Loki took Baldur aside. “Have you ever been prepositioned by someone you liked?”

Baldur shrugged. “I don’t know. I never get to chance to truly know them.”

He looked so despondent. Loki wanted to clap him around the ears and tell him to grow up, but Baldur was the younger brother, the youngest brother. To his siblings, he would always be like a child, no matter how old he was.

Loki smiled at him. “I will make you a bet,” he said. “The next time you find someone you would like to know, signal to me and I will keep all others away from you for the rest of the night. Yule is coming up. If you wish to court this person, let me know and I will save you from suitors until Yule night. Should all work out, all will see the pair of you at the Yule feast and none shall bother you again. Well, unless the courtship does not work out.” He thought and frowned. “You may get some singing forlorn ballads beneath your window for a while, but that shouldn’t last long.”

 

A little while later, Loki found Thor and told him of the bet.

“I know of some lovely highborn girls. Perfect matches,” he said. He played with a knife as he did so, tossing it blade over handle. “I wouldn’t trust him to pick the right partner himself. We – meaning I – must guide him into it. For the good of the kingdom.”

“And our little brother’s pleasure!” Thor added, cheerfully.

Loki pulled a face. “It is precisely because he is our little brother that I am not thinking of it in such terms. This is a courtship, brother, a match-making. If Baldur does happen to take his suitor to bed, it is only a small part of the overall achievement.”

Thor patted Loki on the back. “It is okay, brother. Once you’ve finally gotten round to love-making, you’ll understand. Now, if I might nominate Olav Torsson’s daughter… Ingrid, I believe, as an ideal candidate. I once saw her put both feet behind her-“

Thor carried on and eventually wandered off, still rambling to himself.

Only when he was out of sight did Loki fling the throwing knife into the nearest wall.


End file.
